Sunday, October 18, 2009

Another encounter with a bird! How odd this year has been for me and birds!

Yesterday, I went to Gail's store to pick up a paycheck. While there, she told me that there had been a white dove hanging around all week. At first I thought - oh my gosh, no way could it be my baby dove that I lost over the summer! But Gail said the dove was solid white and mine have salmon patches on them. Well, I hung around for an hour or so but no sighting of the dove, so I went home. I worried about that bird half the night. It's gotten pretty cold at night here and they aren't equipped to survive on their own.

Well today a little after 1 o'clock, Gail's daughter called me to say that the dove was there, and she had brought a friend along. I told Alissa to hurry and get her shoes and coat on and we were going to try to catch these birds. When we got to the store, both birds were sitting together in the area that we keep bags of mulch and flower pots, in a protected area. I had taken my fish net with me (used to catch wayward chickens) and successfully got the "new" bird, who is spotted like mine. The solid white one got spooked and flew onto the top railing of a display. I hoped she would come back down to the ground, but she flew away.

I left the net at the store and gave Gail's daughter a lesson on how to use it if the bird should show up again (which I think it will).

These birds have bands on their legs and I've been trying to track down who they belong to.

Here's a picture of the new guy. I think he's a pigeon, not a dove. He's noticeably larger than my birds. His eyes are very different from my birds' too. His has a very light ring around the iris; my birds'are solid black.

So this summer, I lost one of my baby doves; had an encounter with the baby wren that got stuck on a glue board; an orchard oriole that got caught inside some deer netting that I had over a holly bush, and a poor goldfinch that drowned trying to drink water that was too far down in a big pot I had a goldfish in. I didn't post about the latter two incidents. Oh, and it wasn't an encounter, but I've seen the Pileated Woodpecker twice now - once right beside my property!

On an unrelated note, here's a picture of my old ladder that I bought at the Cameron sale a couple of weeks ago. I have it on my front porch. It looks really cute with the jack-o-lantern plugged in.